Learner Dad: 'Our two watch the Toy Show the next morning with a fist-full of chocolate'

I’M not a great one for the Toy Show. This isn’t a commentary on the quality of the show, or Ryan Tubridy’s jumper, they both seem fine to me. It’s about something much more important than that – the amount of sleep-in time it buys me on a Saturday morning. 

Our two are aged six and eight, so we’re in dodgy territory if we keep them up until 11pm to watch TV. I know you can gee them up on sugar treats, but I also know the way they get after two hours of that, and I’m worried the neighbours will report us for noise nuisance. So we usually let them watch it on the RTÉ Player the next morning, with a fist-full of chocolate for their breakfast, while we doze and doze. 

It never works. They’re Netflix and YouTube heads now, so when an ad comes on during their show, they actually start crying.  The upshot is they’re in to us by eight on Saturday morning, saying that life must have been very hard in the past if the Toy Show was all ye had as entertainment. (I’m paraphrasing, but not much.)

The plan as it stands is to keep them up for the opening sequence, bed after that, they can watch the rest in the morning. I’d say they’ll probably ask to play Minecraft instead on Saturday morning. I could be wrong – maybe they’ll finally get what we got from the Toy Show growing up.

Vitamin D:  

One of the best things about writing in a health section like 'Feelgood' is your editor is good with tips for what ails you. When I told her in passing this week that I’m having a sluggish November, she told me it’s time to try vitamin D. So I will. 

Funnily enough, it was only when I said it to her that I realised how  true it was.  I’ve been feeling really sluggish for the last few weeks, which is the last thing you want when you’re cooped up with the kids at the weekend. ( The p atience would be thin.) I’ve asked around and more than one person has  said they’re feeling it too. 

I r eckoned it was lockdown fatigue - 2020 would do that to a person. B ut the people I talked to have a different explanation – November. They said they always drop down a gear around this time of the year. I still think it’s a little bit of both. Normally the brigh t  lights and pints of Christmas would drag us through November with out pause for thought – there isn’t much of that this year, so now the 11 th month is a bit like walking in treacle . 

The good news is my kids are in the form of their lives looking forward to as good a Christmas as ever. That’s the bad news as well because I can’t keep up with them . So I’m going to start Vitamin D. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Flying high: 

Have you heard about Miyazaki? No, I’m not talking about the unreal Japanese takeaway at the bottom of Barrack Street in Cork. I’m talking about Hayao Miyazaki, a Japanese animated movie director I heard about in the playground from one of the parents. T his Miyazaki is the founder of Studio Ghibli and Netflix now has 21 of its movies for our bingeing pleasure. 

We watched one, The Wind Rises, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and it blew me away. (No pun intended.) It’s beautiful, that’s the only word for it. It’s like an amazing painting, shot after shot, telling a really good story with a moral and everything. 

Our two kids lasted a good hour watching it before giving up because it lacked the sugar-rush, wham-bam action of an American animated movie. But I’m going to win them over, with chocolate bribes if needs be because I want to watch a lot more Miyazaki.